NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool II 1/12/20

Trent Seven vs. Eddie Dennis

ER: Eddie Dennis has a wild set of reptile gear, full boots and toxic slime green snakeskin like he's some kind of early 90s straight to video punk. It's glorious. I like him and Seven as a match up, and there's some explosive stuff. The match starts with a wicked one armed powerbomb by Seven, planting Dennis after catching him charging in. Dennis takes Seven's offense really well, bouncing right off his head on a DDT, getting dumped to the floor with a snap German. But Seven's punishment gets even better with a fast tope and and a snapdragon suplex on the floor. Their pace is really impressive for the level of big moves they're piling up. It's like a weird crazy WCW Power Plant match if they only studied NOAH tapes, with some forearms and big flipping slightly complicated slams, threats of Burning Hammers and Emerald Flowsions, and Seven hitting a right forearm in the corner as hard as Misawa's best. There are a bunch of big complicated slams, and the absolute craziness peaks when Dennis launches Seven with a Razor's Edge to the floor like he was Mike Awesome. Totally crazy spot to lead to a finish, not like any other finish I've seen on NXT UK. This was a cool ass 8 minute gem, really scrappy and portent, filled with big slams and cool bumps. Hot as hell start to a TakeOver. 

Toni Storm vs. Piper Niven vs. Kay Lee Ray

ER: I really hated how they turned this match into a 3 way. I love Toni, but she felt like a real third wheel in the build to this match, and in the match itself. Niven won the title shot, and then the week before TakeOver Storm just demands Niven let her have the match, and then they put her in the match just because she said she should be in the match! It's awful wrestling storytelling, but she's also a kind of necessary distraction in the match, and allowed them to do some big things that would have felt silly to kick out of. I hate 3 ways as a rule, but they actually kept things at a great pace to start. Niven works really well in a 3 way, as one of her issues is insisting on working fast paced singles without always keeping pace. Here she's able to pace things out and is a great wrecking ball. Niven flattens Ray with a tope and misses a fast cannonball into the barricade, but is back to flattening when she breaks up a pin with a senton. The match gets pretty bad the more melodramatic they got, with dumb stuff like Ray finding a chair under the ring and choking Storm while showing tons of light on the choke, or a big dumb face off between Storm and Niven where the camera framed them. The "making movies" thing can be real painful, but when they went back to being dangerous things got good again. Nigel on commentary calls Kay Lee Ray the "Glaswegian Sabu" at one point, which sounds near blasphemous, but when she hits a somersault plancha to the floor and bounces her legs off the barricade and head off the floor, then breaks up a pin by spiking herself with a somersault senton, this could be an Actual Thing. She looked like she under-rotated on a crazy senton, and then took a powerbomb right after. That's nuts. Storm gets to visually beat Niven before Ray superkicks her off, and I guess now that sets up Storm/Niven which feels reductive, since Storm just shoehorned herself in to begin with. There was some really good stuff here though, a lot of it. This was actually my favorite match of either Niven or Ray in NXT UK, and Storm facilitated some of that. 

Tyler Bate vs. Jordan Devlin

ER: This was a big match with a big payoff and big in-match build, a singles match that actually felt mostly worthy of the long TakeOver match lengths. I think Devlin put his time in well, liked how a lot of the offense built, I mainly just didn't like the ways Bate would just pop up to start his own sequences. Now, Devlin works around most of that really well, finding fun ways to set up Bate's comebacks. Devlin kept using the ropes in fun ways, like cutting off a Bate dive and nailing a nice rope flip moonsault, choking him in the ropes, also getting caught in a torture rack-type fireman's carry when he went to slingshot in with a cutter. Devlin, unsurprisingly, was a real asshole here. He mocked Bate and added some extra sauce to holds and strikes, the best being Devlin dragging Bate down into a Romero surfboard, then bending back on Bate's chin until they were staring eye to eye, sicko stuff.  

Devlin is good at working enough actual offense that reversals of that offense actually make sense, and Bate is good at stepping up with someone like that. I do think it veered into move trading, with Bate constantly need to shrug off whatever had just happened to him to hop up and do something impressive, but luckily Devlin is good at facilitating those hop-ups and Bate can break out something impressive. Bate does an airplane spin that starts slow and ugly and looks like it will be a dud, but keeps going and going and by the end I loved how Bate started with a bit of struggle and then kept building speed. By the time he dropped Devlin I was dizzy on my couch, which sounds stupid, but I'm not sure I've seen someone do an airplane spin this fast. Devlin had smart counters to expected Bate offense, dropping him with a cutter to the apron that almost leads to a count out win (with Devlin amusingly kicking him around 8 to keep Bate out longer), and nailing him with a Spanish Fly to counter a Bate charge. Devlin incorporated a lot of learned behavior into reversals, but Bate mostly just took big moves and then decided to do his own moves. This was the match with the somewhat infamous "punch out" spot, which I actually think is "not actually as shitty as it was made out to be". It's kind of hilarious to me that of all spots, Bate and Devlin doing stand and trade got GIF'd and laughed at, because most feds run shows with worse standing exchanges up and down the card. Do Tyler Bate's arms look short and silly when he swings them? Short? Always. Silly? Sometimes. Give me a punch exchange like this every single time over turn taking elbows and forearms. I liked how some of their punches whiffed completely, because it's frankly silly when every strike in an exchange hits perfectly. Bate needed a big finish to firmly put away Devlin, and Devlin is always great at getting spiked on DDTs and flattened by powerbombs, and the crowd was along for every second of Devlin taking it. Perhaps this went too long

Mark Coffey/Wolfgang vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. James Drake/Zack Gibson vs. Flash Morgan Webster/Mark Andrews

ER: So, this match was insane. This was easily one of the greatest highspot ladder matches in history, not just WWE history. This was 25 minutes - normally a match length that I would argue is completely unnecessary for *most* matches - but due to the furious pace that this things was worked, I was shocked at how "long" the match was when it was over. This does not feel like a 25 minute match, because from minute one every single person is flying around the ring at breakneck speed taking bumps that surely shaved months/years off their careers/lives, and I don't think that pace even took a slight break until the 18 minute mark. Not only did they work wall to wall crazy spots and dangerous moments, but they did a great job of making every team seem like they could walk away with the belts. I thought they did so well without the ladders, chaining offense together faster and faster, utilizing all 8 guys to give proper rest and generally avoiding guys ignoring damage to get to the next spot in time, that I was kind of dreading this becoming a climbing contest when it settled down. So, they opted to never settle the match down, using the ladders at first in familiar ways, but then doing twists on familiar ladder match spots before exploding with some things I've never seen before. 

It is completely pointless to detail all of the spots that happened in this match, because it would take me twice as long to type everything than it would take you to find and watch the match. One of the cooler aspects was that every team in the match, worked like a team. They all had tandem offense that was not always their typical tandem offense, remixing some spots and adding in ladders to others, and all the teams actually felt like they had individual strategies. They kept the spot set-up time to a minimum, and when they did one gigantic crash spot that had everyone fall like dominoes, prolonging the punishment instead of everybody just landing like shit from one giant tower powerbomb. It's tough to pick a standout, but I really liked Wolfgang a ton. He's the guy doing crazy spots while also shaking his arm out after punches. Yeah, he'll throw big ass Mark Coffey over the top rope onto everyone and then vault out himself to powerslam Drake on the entrance ramp. But, while men lay dying on the battlefield around him, he's still remembering to sell that his fist hurts, and I love it. So Wolfgang was probably my favorite, but this was a team effort. Every guy got at least one big moment (at LEAST). Mark Andrews hit a perfect shooting star press off the ladder onto Coffey, he and Webster hit a wild tandem somersault senton off a very high ladder, and Grizzled Young Vets seemed to be on the end of all the worst punishments, especially poor James Drake. Drake got smashed with ladders and under ladders and under bodies so many times, poor guy spent most of the match kicking his legs and holding his insides. Imperium looked like real beasts, squeezing their double teams into a ladder landscape even better than the others, Barthel tossing smaller guys off the ladders into waiting arms of Aichner so they could be dropped on their heads. 

It's a match with nothing but great spots, but my favorite had to be Imperium punishing Webster. With Webster laid on a ladder, which had been propped up on the ropes, Barthel holds Webster down so Aichner can hit a springboard moonsault, with Barthel rolling OVER Webster at the last minute TOWARDS Aichner's moonsault, so he wouldn't be standing where Aichner's boots were going to whip. I mentioned the car crash spot, and it really was great. They brought 5 or 6 ladders into the ring, everyone was climbing on them and climbing over each other like World War Z, one guy getting knocked to the mat here, Barthel getting knocked all the way to the floor there, Webster amusingly setting up his ladder so it smashes Gibson in between his own ladder, total madness. Wolfgang goes bet mode down the stretch and spears Aichner so hard into a ladder that the ladder breaks into 4 pieces. I don't think I've ever seen a ladder snap right in half during one of these matches, even when someone falls onto one from a great height. I thought I was pretty burnt out on stunt ladder matches, but this one had me from go and was absolutely relentless. 

WALTER vs. Joe Coffey

ER: I thought this was a pretty great 17 minute main event that made the decision to be a 27 minute main event, and treated that extra 10 minutes as if the previous 17 were just a dream. It was admittedly a bit odd how the match seemed to position Joe Coffey as the babyface and WALTER as kind of a generic heel , but I liked the actual ring work a lot. WALTER worked this mostly as a big chopping monster, and Coffey was the smaller "babyface" who kept trying and throwing WALTER with suplexes. WALTER is great at a big man getting knocked off his feet, and I loved how all of Coffey's suplexes looked like he was having trouble lifting WALTER, because he *should* be having a lot of trouble suplexing WALTER. WALTER wasn't hopping into any suplex and it ruled. If Coffey was going to hit a Saito suplex, it was going to be low to the ground with a heavy landing for both, making the suplexes look more like something you'd see in a Hashimoto/Red Bull Army match. There were a couple odd miscues every time WALTER threw a big boot (one that was supposed to hit did not at all; one that was supposed to miss, hit, and was treated as a miss anyway), but mostly it was WALTER throwing heavy chops while Coffey kept deadlifting WALTER on suplexes. WALTER threw hard elbows, cranked Coffey's neck, and worked a nice STF, Coffey hit a boss shoulderblock off the apron (flying at WALTER like a torpedo), fought for a big German suplex, and hit a surprising moonsault. 

When WALTER accidentally hit the ref with a John Woo dropkick (and the ref sold it like a drama queen rolling down a very soft incline), things mostly fell apart. Coffey gets an immediate visual pin off a powerbomb, Alexander Wolfe and Ilja Dragunov run down and get involved, Dragunov knocks Wolfe into Coffey and they basically do a full match restart for the remaining 10. Nothing felt like it mattered down the home stretch, and WALTER - who had just been "pinned" by a powerbomb moments before - now has several winds and the two trade moves until one of those moves wins the match. Every big move (WALTER powerbomb, Coffey avalanche belly to belly) was used as a way for the guy taking the move to transition back to offense, and there were more miscues like Coffey mostly missing a big clothesline and them just repeating the spot right after. After WALTER chokes out Coffey he had to give the biggest acting performance of his life, acting vaguely threatened by Adam Cole. Cole looked tinier than both referees and the camera angles made it looked like a small child ran into the ring after WALTER's win. 

This was a top to bottom great show, with the only bad 10 minutes being the last 10 minutes of the main event. Every other match was a total over-delivery, making this easily one of the best TakeOver events. WALTER/Coffey was probably the weakest overall match, and that was a match I really loved until it went crazy with the booking. Highly recommend this show. 

Best Matches: 

1. Tag Team Ladder Match

2. Jordan Devlin vs. Tyler Bate

3. Eddie Dennis vs. Trent Seven

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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NXT UK Worth Watching: Noam Dar vs. Tyler Bate! An Actual Great 3-Way!

Ligero vs. Joseph Conners vs. Travis Banks NXT UK 11/15 (Aired 12/5/19) (Ep. #71)

ER: Had you told me I was about to watch a match that was not only a triple threat match, but also nothing but 10 minutes of chained offense, I would have zoned out immediately. NXT UK isn't really a fed that does triple threat matches (one of their best features) and it's difficult to chain a lot of offense through a triple threat because you're dealing with that extra man. It started a little hinky and ironed out the quirks pretty quickly, settling into a fast paced match that felt much longer than it actually was, but not in a bad way! They squeezed so many ideas into a relatively short running time that it felt much more complete than most triple threat matches, while managing to avoid one guy constantly lying just out of frame waiting until it was his turn to step in. Describing the action feels almost pointless, as moves begat moves begat moves, but this was incredibly fun. Ligero really glued this together, not always having the most showcase worthy offense but clearly knowing how to get this match from A-E and not miss C. 

When I started the NXT UK project Ligero was an early standout for performances like this one, but tapered off hard in 2019 after his great Ohno match. Conners also felt like he really came together here, as his Brian Kendrick-lite act plays well in the middle of a chaotic three way. Chained offense usually comes off like two guys waiting around for one guy to get to a specific spot, and this rarely had that eye vacancy of remembering dance steps. Instead they upped the crazy as the match went on while not messing up the timing, so the match felt more like an exciting tightrope walk the longer it went. Banks hit a great early tope suicida on Conners, and later in the match when Conners goes to wipe out Banks with the same, Conners instead gets elbowed out of the air and topes to nothing. There was enough of that violence throughout that it never felt like three guys doing throwback ECW Nova offense, instead making a bunch of the highspots look opportunistically cool (Conners giving Ligero a DDT after a cradle attempt, big spills to the floor, a Conners double stomp on the ring steps). This felt like a real lightning in a bottle triple threat, like they hit a point where every complicated sequence was just working, and I don't think they could replicate it. I think it stands alone as a great match, using a bad match format, featuring majority problematic wrestlers, and that's a weird achievement.

Noam Dar vs. Tyler Bate NXT UK 11/16 (Aired 12/19/19) (Ep. #73)

ER: Another great Noam Dar performance. Dar is really great at mocking an opponent while in control and then showing tons of ass the second the tide turns. He mocked Bate every chance he got while taking every cheapshot he could, then leaned right into everything that Bate threw at him. They started with some cool learned behavior stuff, which can come off really dance-y but mostly avoided it here. Too often when learned behavior comes into play, it turns into two guys with vacant stares trying to remember their next step, but a lot of their tricks felt really organic, like Dar shoving Bate into the ropes and dropping down for a Phillie Phanatic trip and Bate holds the ropes and pounces on Dar's back. Things hit that next level when Dar gets pissed and stomps down on the inside of Bate's knee, then does a cool Garvin stomp variation going around to each limb, lifting it, and stomping it to the mat. I loved Dar's use of the snapmare as active offense, snapmaring Bate into the turnbuckles and into the ring steps. The snapmare is slowly becoming a lost art, as most don't use it any longer and many that do don't know how to properly execute one. Dar not only executes a great snapmare, but uses his in ways that nobody else does, and that's the kind of thing that makes a wrestler stand out high above the rest. 

Dar almost wins by count out after the snapmare into the ring steps (Dar mocking Bate's big strong boy poses in the ring the entire time) and we move into a really good extended final stretch of nearfalls and reversals. Dar has some awesome reversals, and they're all used to interrupt Bate's trademark bullshit, which makes the reversals not only more satisfying, but adds to that high end level of "learned behavior" they played with to start the match. Dar cuts off Bate's bullshit with nasty reversals, dropping him with a quick Flatliner to cut off that spot where Bate makes people stop in their tracks for a right hand, and when Bate bounces shoulders first off the top rope (to hit his big lariat) Dar just grabs his legs and drops down into his heel hook. It feels weird to say that Noam Dar has the best heel hook/knee bar in wrestling, but it's pretty hard to dispute how grinding it looks here. Dar looks like he is shredding Bate's ligaments and I am here for all of it. Bate does some fun theatrical one leg hopping the rest of the match, and Dar seems like he has a well of ideas to pull off annoying shifts in momentum. He bails to the floor to break up a fast sequence (then gets taken out by a big no hands running plancha), but when Bate limps up to the top rope he catches knees on the way down. Dar is great at taking offense, and I love the way he sells and staggers for Bate's shots, not taking the same bump twice, and matching the level of bump to the impact of the move. Bate does nail that big right hand to set up the finish, and Dar buckles his knees and puts a hand down to stop himself from going down, perfectly setting up Bate's Tiger Driver win. Dar was so good here, that it really felt like the kind of thing Ohno brought to NXT UK, catering a cool match around a specific opponent and taking the match in directions that nobody else has. He must have sitting on some of these ideas and wanting to work them into a match with Bate for ages, yet at no point did this ever come off like a "getting all of my ideas in" match. Very impressive. 

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff 8/31/19

Noam Dar vs. Travis Banks

ER: Great stuff, an excellent start to a big TakeOver. Noam Dar may be the best on the roster at doing dance step wrestling, and he does it in a way that doesn't actually make that style a problem. His timing is strong, his placement is excellent, and the way he positions himself and occupies himself while waiting for offense is second to few. The main problem, for me, with dance sequence wrestling is that nothing feels organic, everything feels like a blank eyed run back of rehearsed spots, and Noam Dar manages to do very complicated sequences while adding personal touches that keep them feeling organic. I've never gotten the sense that he is locked into a pre-planned set of steps, as he seems to respond incredibly quick to a change in plans. If a kick doesn't land the way it's supposed to, the plan does not appear to continue as initially planned, and there are very few guys this good at thinking on their feet. Dar doesn't take any shortcuts in his transitions, chopping down with his elbow to lock an arm, snatching Banks out of the air by his leg and holding it tight the whole way through a sequence, and a cool way of attacking several parts of the body while appearing to be focused. 

Banks is good at selling Dar's inflicted damage while still getting his offense in, and he's good at taking Dar's most punishing stuff. I loved Dar's two vicious snapmares, one into the ring ropes and another into the barricade, really making it look like he's forcing Banks into a painful bump. There's also cool work around the ring steps and other ring rope tricks, but all the reversals were super crisp and fit nicely into the match. Dar comes off like a Jack Gallagher peer at this point, great at crafting strong story in a 6 minute match or an 18 minute match. He's good at pulling off smug but undeniably well executed heel offense that makes things feel more heated, and gives a good babyface something real to play off. This built to some really hot, fast stuff. Banks plasters Dar with a great tope, nails him with a couple double stomps, Dar leans into hard sliding dropkicks and hits his own brutal running knees, all building to some well orchestrated kickouts. This ramped up really well and was worked snugly enough to keep throwing off sparks. Great chemistry, great gauntlet to throw down at the start of a big show. 

Ilja Dragunov vs. Cesaro

ER: This is Cesaro's first appearance in NXT UK, and I love WWE treating their Network brands like territories to send main brand stars into. It's something they should do more, give some of the best guys the opportunity to work a Star Passing Through a Territory match. Cesaro brings great main brand presence, dwarfing Dragunov and acting like the guy deservedly crossed over to the main roster. Dragunov is bigger and more muscular than most of the guys in NXT UK, but Cesaro makes him look like a Little Buff Boys finalist. Cesaro beats Dragunov pillar to post, forcing Dragunov to make some pretty awful faces, faces I loved seeing take uppercuts. Dragunov may make dumb faces, but he endures some real punishment for the right to make those dumb faces, so more power to him. Cesaro is really dominating, building from hard chops and shoulderblocks into throwing his whole body into uppercuts and headlocks, dragging Dragunov arm under throat into sick crossfaces. Cesaro throws Dragunov over the top rope to the floor, into the barricade, drawing fair comparisons to The Berzerker. Cesaro delivers a Berzerker level beatdown. He gets a huge (fast counted) giant swing and a violent belly to back suplex. I thought Ilja's comebacks were fine, though I don't think I ever fully bought into him potentially beating Cesaro. Cesaro felt too much like a larger more perfect killing machine version of Dragunov, and Cesaro as a killing machine is a beautiful sight. He hits a press slam into a kneelift and then a torpedo uppercut for a big nearfall, and finishes things with a huge pop up uppercut, immediately yanking Ilja into the Gotch piledriver. This felt like a good version of Ric Flair vs. Terry Taylor, with Cesaro coming across as a far more punishing traveling-champ Flair. 

PAS: Dragunov is kind of a goof, but an endearing one. I mean Kikuchi made silly faces too, and Dragunov takes Kikuchi level beatings. That press slam into a knee strike by Cesaro really should be his finisher, what a brutal bit of business that was. I did think when Draganov had Cesaro reeling on the floor he had a chance, and I loved Cesaro decisively shutting the door on him with that pop up uppercut and Gotch combo finish. I would love to see Cesaro in this role more often. He had a great Regal match years ago when he did this same sort of drop down. He is dead in the water on the main roster anyway, he might as well as go after the NXT UK title again. A rematch with Dragunov as the champ would be great stuff.  

Mark Andrews/Flash Morgan Webster vs.  Mark Coffey/Wolfgang vs. Grizzled Young Veterans

ER: This tag bit off more than it could probably chew, but there is plenty of joyous wrestling action to exist in matches where guys bite off too much. It's a 20 minute tag that would have exploded at 15, but gave us a big babyface tag title win for hometown Cardiff boys Webster and Andrews. Everyone here had a lot (maybe too much sometimes) to contribute, with Wolfgang standing out as one of the best guys on the brand at taking complicated flier offense. Gibson did the same, and Webster got to shine with his fun combo of dives, ranas, and top rope flips. Wolfgang is the biggest guy in the match, and he goes up for two different crazy bumps where he's on someone's shoulders. He takes a poison rana with a perfect vertical spike, and then takes a nutso Doomsday Device tope from James Drake late in the match, folding hard on the entrance floor. Gibson is good at getting into position for some big Andrews offense, both GYF taking his Stundog Millionaire as well as anyone. Fan reaction kept growing along with the match, even if I thought things could have been edited down (take out the long Gallus disappearance that only gets paid off with a Drake tope, trim the standoffs and bad showdown fighting) they clearly knew the audience and kept them hooked. Strong rudos make for strong babyfaces, and this was a fine team effort. Gibson and Drake started off hot 50 episodes ago, but they've been a stale act with the titles. Webster and Andrews will be a fun change of pace in title matches, champions that feel beatable but are capable of surprising. Gallus are the clear talent of any tag match, and the 3 way format made them too much of an afterthought. I don't think it harms them as an act, as they still remain the favorites to get the belts and have a long run. Wolfgang feels like someone who has over a year of different title defense ideas in him. 

Dave Mastiff vs. Joe Coffey

ER: I thought this started incredibly, with the first 4 minutes stacking up well against all my favorite NXT UK stuff. I wish this was just a violent street fight instead of a last man standing as when they were fighting, rather that doing stunts, this was excellent. So we have those first 4 minutes, starting with a great fight in the entrance way with both going after the injuries suffered in their excellent match that set this match up. There's a sick early moment (very early) where Coffey gets whipped into the turnbuckles hard and the whole top rope snaps off. Coffey really flew into that buckle and the PONG sound when he hit was great, and I really don't think that rope was supposed to break. They kind of try to go on with the match in ring but once Coffey eats shit off the middle rope they go with a more weapons and plunder approach, which is fine. It lead to cool things like Mastiff jamming a turnbuckle support bar in Coffey's mouth and throwing him mouth first on the mat, and I wish they would have played more around with that instead of going to the floor so quickly. The under ring weapons portion was my least favorite of the match as it felt so much more manufactured than the body/injury targeting fight this started as. But Coffey still took some crazy bumps, like a sky high backdrop on the floor and a release German suplex, plus getting walloped a couple times by a cricket bat. 

They both take some gnarly spills, both get put through tables, but some of the stuff is so silly in its violence that it doesn't really vibe with their super serious attitudes. Take, for example, when they both get chairs and run headlong down a long aisle at each other, collide, and then both spill backward down the aisle. It was like Homer and Bart running at each other wearing pots on their heads. Coffey takes the Finlay roll on the announce table, both fall off the second landing through another set of tables, you know the drill with WWE brand Last Man Standing matches. The finish is clever, with both men getting to their feet after their tandem spill, leaning on those rolling load-in containers, and as Coffey is standing he kicks the rolling container out of Mastiff's hands and causes him to fall, or, not stand. There was a lot of great in this match, but while they did a ton of damage to each other, things felt much more mapped out once they went to the floor. Coffey for his part turned in a great overall performance, and the first 4 minutes play as a killer follow up to their excellent TV match. 

Toni Storm vs. Kay Lee Ray

ER: Disappointing. Not the kind of match you want to change a title on, and the title change came off completely flat. I loved how they started things, with Ray refusing to lock up and repeatedly hopping to the floor, until Storm hit a great tope suicida past the ringpost, Storm slams Ray into the barricade, throws forearms and kicks, and generally dominates most of this match from there. In fact, the whole thing felt so flat because it felt like Storm was either too dominant, OR too dominant so that she would save face with a title loss? I can't explain it, but whatever it was, it didn't work for me or the fans in attendance. This was the Toni show, with a couple of big German suplexes (one tossing Ray from the middle turnbuckle), Code Red, big headbutt, and a Storm Zero that only gets 2 (with a suitably doofy Toni face accompanying it). Storm even nails another tope suicida, but they get to the finish so quick that it almost felt like something was wrong. Ray hits a knee, big senton to the floor (Toni with a nice catch so Ray doesn't die), and then Ray hits a couple Gory bombs in the ring for the title win. Now, I loved the Gory bomb set up, with Ray dropping Toni over the top rope with the first and a traditional one for the pin, but I don't think anybody watching thought this was the finish. It wasn't a short match (10 minutes or so), but this didn't feel like a finish they had actually been building to (even with Ray hitting a Gory bomb earlier). This landed flat, and if they were going to put a belt on a heel then Jinny would have been a much more interesting choice. This match never felt like the match they were building it to be, never felt like any kind of unique history played into it. 

WALTER vs. Tyler Bate

ER: This was a 2019 match that even people who pretend online to not watch NXT UK went out of their way to watch. This was the first NXT UK match that Meltzer went real cuckoo about, choosing once again to break the rules of his own established star ratings, and being perfect-plus still means something to some people. But you know? I just did not need 42 minutes of perfect-plus. I don't think that length was necessary and I would've loved to have seen a 21 minute edit. But it's also an impressive physical feat to work over 40 minutes of hard striking and harder bumps, and this match somehow managed to get more physical the longer it went. I did not buy Bate standing up to all the damage and making all the comebacks he did, but I also must acknowledge that there was some absolutely brutal punishment he took that was not pulled, and I can't take that away from him. Tyler Bate took a genuine beating, and still kept the awareness to pull off some very complicated runs. 

I do think there was far too much down time, and that it's hard to sustain disbelief when WALTER is laying it on full strength. WALTER threw enough full arm chops to purple up Bate's chest 20 minutes in, and that chest was one thing Bate never forgot to sell. WALTER crashed hard on shoulderblocks and lariats and went to the chin with his elbows, and his rudest offense made it seem like he should have no problem disposing of Bate in under 20. Bate had a few impressive throws on WALTER, but I never once bought any of his strikes. When there's this much of a size difference you REALLY need to tighten things up to narrow that gap. Instead Bate had a lot of big blows that were supposed to be moment payoffs, and I think they all landed flat. I am just not going to buy into a single Bate short left hook putting WALTER down for longer than anything he did to Bate. And to buy into this match, you have to buy into several moments just like that. Implausible as I found the last 20 minutes of Tyler Bate comebacks, they did work a ton of very good nearfalls that really build nicely. Bate was at his best when he was using his body as a weapon, hit or miss. His tope suicidas were unhinged full body crashes into WALTER, his top rope corkscrew senton was great, he flew into a chop to the shoulder blades and got powerbombed horizontally into a ringpost. So while I hated a lot of Bate's payoff strikes, his peaks were majestic. The crowd was truly along for the ride and wanted to see Bate win the title, and that goes a long way towards the match's favor.  So while I wish I could have seen what their 20 minute main event looked like, they do manage to fill 42 minutes with some strong peaks. That's an overall success. 

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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NXT UK Worth Watching: OHNO! Imperium! Williams!

WALTER/Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. Pete Dunne/Tyler Bate/Trent Seven NXT UK 4/20 (Aired 6/12/19) (Ep. #46)

ER: NXT UK really doesn't do many trios matches, and they have a roster that would really benefit from having some trios matches. I guess they really weren't part of traditional British wrestling (not sure I've ever seen a trios match from World of Sport, but there are a lot of things I've forgotten over the years so who knows), and there have only been a couple so far through 46 episodes of NXT UK. The highest floor NXT UK matches have strong pacing, and it's easier to pace out a trios. This was all really fun and the format made everyone's entrance into the match a little more exciting. A Pete Dunne hot tag is going to be better when he's able to tag in and hit a cool few things before being leveled by WALTER, and Bate is someone else who benefits from a tag that's not immediately stopped so he can get in all his moves. Imperium are good at controlling, sectioning off the ring, keeping things interesting by rotating guys through. WALTER felt like the real standout here, always there to cut someone off with a high kick, and his work with Dunne was especially noteworthy. WALTER is really good at setting up offense for people, and when Dunne tagged in - looking like he was just going to be getting his shit in - I loved how WALTER turned it into a much cooler segment by quickly sidestepping a moonsault and chopping Dunne in the back of his neck before locking in a rear naked. Aichner and Bartel threw themselves into their offense with gusto, like a nice Bartel kneedrop or a killer Aichner brainbuster. WALTER was really great at running things, all members of Mustache got to show off their strengths in quick bursts, with Seven chopping a great watercolor pattern on WALTER's chest, Bate getting a big double clothesline, nice dive from Seven, and then the debut of Alexander Wolfe finishes it. It's a played out way to debut someone, bring them in under a hood while announcers poorly feign confusion, but Wolfe sticks Bate with a nasty sitout powerbomb so I'm good. 

Kassius Ohno vs. Kenny Williams NXT UK 6/14 (Aired 6/19/19) (Ep. #47)

ER: Another great Ohno NXT UK performance, with him always finding ways to restrict himself during matches, always working a match specifically toward his opponent. His NXT UK run really feels like  the closest we can come to a genuine territory arrival. It has a real Finlay Return to the Indies feel to it, and that's a great feeling. Here he starts working over Williams' right arm, holding it clutched in his armpit while refusing to be shaken off. Williams tries to roll him off with an armdrag, Ohno rolls through with him and comes up trapping the same arm. Ohno put on a clinic of handless limb control, bending Williams' arm at the elbow just by moving his body. Just as I'm wondering how Kenny is going to get out of it he leaps up and grabs Ohno in a headscissors, forcing Ohno to rope break. I was wondering where Ohno was going to take the arm control, but instead Williams got cute with a sunset flip attempt and Ohno stomped him right on the underside of the jaw. 

And from then on Ohno does not give one good damn about Williams' arm, just wrecking Kenny with chops and strikes, hard boots, flattens him with a Finlay roll (there's that name again...), and comes up with several cool ways to shove Williams' throat into the ropes. I do think Williams took it down a bit with his comeback, breaking the nice rhythm they had going. There was just a bit too much hesitation with a few of his moves, and Ohno is someone with precise timing. Ohno's sequences are all tightly orchestrated, so it's obvious when Williams is making him wait too long on a mark. It's not super offensive, and he still manages a couple cool things like a multi step ankle pick, and it's mostly a strong pairing. Ohno hits knees on his senton after being too cocky, but I think Williams needed to work quicker than he did. It felt like Ohno had to sell too long for offense that looked like some of Williams' weakest. The worst offender was him doing a sloppy upside down rebound off the ropes (similar to a poor Jon Moxley night) and hitting a too pulled penalty kick after. I mean...he could have just kicked Ohno. He didn't need to navigate a ropes course before kicking him. 

Kenny hits a dive and waits a bit too long to hit a back elbow off the top into the ring, and things immediately get great again when Ohno cuts him off and aims to murder. Williams tries more silly flouncy rope tricks and Ohno rams him throat first into the ropes again, then doesn't waste time smashing him in the back of the head with a roaring elbow while Williams was still hung up in the ropes. These two match up again 9 months from now, in a match I saw before I saw this match. I think their second match is better, but they make a great set as both matches are very different. Ohno could have had unique matches with every member of the UK roster several times through. There's no reason this couldn't be the reality we are living right this moment. 

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NXT UK Worth Watching: Gallagher! Andrews! Webster! Bate!

Mark & Joe Coffey vs. Mark Andrews/Flash Morgan Webster NXT UK 1/27 (Aired 2/20/19) (Ep. #30)

ER: I really liked this, and thought it was a fun way to work a match where the outcome wasn't ever in doubt. We knew Gallus was going to run over Mandrews and the Modfather, and I like how they got to that. Mark Coffey is really good at working with juniors, knows how to miss close and occupy time while highspots are being set up, and Andrews especially was great at sticking and moving between the larger team. Andrews doesn't skimp on his strikes, gets his boots up into Mark's face and pushes off, hits an uppercut that looks like something that would slow down a big guy. You knew Andrews was only going to  keep pace for so long, and it turns on a dime with the Coffey brothers hitting a wicked pop up uppercut. They cut the ring off, Mark planting a kneedrop, Joe backing Andrews into the corner with great punches (hard shot to the face that Andrews sold like someone who got punched right in the face, and some great body shots), lifts him with a nasty hammerlock and overhead throw, and Andrews' only saving grace is that he's good at leaping out of powerbombs. Webster has a fun hot tag, and I think there's a reason they had Mark in the ring when the tag was made, he took a Asai moonsault very well, and Webster swung around the ringpost to hit a rana on Joe on the floor. We get a fun spot down the stretch where Andrews tags back in gets caught trying a tornado DDT, but Webster shoves his legs to send the DDT through. We get duel tope con giros, and I thought they did a good job of working in that team flash at the end, right before Andrews is separated again with a suplex on the apron, leaving Webster alone. This easily could have been worked as a squash, or they could have given the flyers more time than would be believable, but I think they found a strong balance, and I came away impressed by Andrews working up to the bigger Gallus. 

Gentleman Jack Gallagher vs. Tyler Bate NXT UK 1/27 (Aired 2/27/19) (Ep. #31)

ER: This had the beginnings of a seriously great match, but I thought the finish was sudden (by design), distractingly long, and more than a little silly. They work it like they're going 20, but it ends at 10. Since the entire match is essentially matwork leading to pinfall, with not much in between, the matwork portion was great and then things basically ended. I'm unsure if I would have been better with the match just ending as a 10 minute draw, rather than the finish we got. It's a little tough to evaluate a match with some of the best mat tricks WWE has seen, that then ends with a couple dozen one counts of an endless rolling cradle reversal and then a schoolboy. So let's just look at the matwork and soak in it pleasantly. Bate was aggressive on the mat, going after Gallagher's arm but not ever really doing too much damage, and always eventually getting shown up and punished by Gallagher. Gallagher had some smooth reversals into snug headscissors, and Bate had a slick moment where he kneeled down on Gallagher's ankles to get him to loosen his legs enough for Bate to pop his head out. 

Jack's Indian deathlocks and work on the knee were great, sinking in holds and doing things like digging his knee into Bate's thigh, and I loved when Gallagher tied Bate's leg in the ropes and then jammed his knee into Bate's knee. I really liked how Bate sold the knee too, being wobbly on his feet and using his bum wheel to still do kneelifts into Gallagher's face (while making it clear that he has made the choice that it's better to use his in-pain knee as a blunt instrument than trust putting weight on it to weaponize his good knee). Things got a little silly when Bate shrugged off the match long work on his leg and held Jack in the air with a keylock, then did an airplane spin. Nothing puts more painful pressure on your knees than the short side to side steps needed to perform airplane spins or giant swings, so this felt egregious to me. Still, it looked like the match was getting off the mat and into a crazy finishing stretch, but then the silly little endless rolling cradle to the finish happened. And that's fine. Wrestling isn't all about Match of the Year status and can also be about the unexpectedly good and bad. This whole thing is well worth seeing just for the opening 7 minutes alone, some of the most fun scrambling and transitions in 2019 wrestling, regardless of promotion.

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NXT UK Worth Watching: Barthel! Aichner! Mark Coffey! WALTER! Mustache Mountain!

Marcel Barthel/Fabian Aichner vs. Trent Seven/Tyler Bate NXT UK 1/13 (Aired 1/30/19) (Ep. #27)

ER: This was great, probably the best UK tag match so far. This was a more successful version of the GYF vs. Mustache tag from TakeOver, with all the fat trimmed out and nothing but action remaining. This is half the time of that tag and really hits the target. The first 2/3 of this felt like a great early 90s WCW tag, with no overly long heat sequence or too long shine. It had quick tags and constant momentum changes, making it feel more like a Brainbusters/Fantastics match, which is a great thing to see in modern wrestling. Barthel is really great at getting into position for offense, and that's important against someone like Bate who goes through a lot of "same moves in the same order" offense. The quick tags by both sides made this match feel more epic than it probably was, as I was shocked it was only a 13 minute run time (felt longer, in a good way). Aichner and Barthel control with cool suplexes and body scissors, both Bate and Seven get runs at wild hot tags (I really liked Seven running wild with a DDT, snapdragon, big lariat, and Bate going wild with a no hands running plancha to the floor), and they did a great job of ramping up the crazy. 

The teamwork from Barthel/Aichner is excellent, and they're smart about using Bate's actual best strength: running into painful offense. My least favorite parts of Bate matches is when everyone has to line up to take his offense in a specific order. I never like when guys selfishly derail things like that. But he has a real gift for taking some stupid bumps and crash landing his body in very unselfish ways. There was an awesome moment here when he went to do his Ray Stevens shoulder spring into the ropes, except he springs directly into a Barthel enziguiri. Bate has a way of committing to these spots that I truly admire. It always surprises me, because when he does his own offense there is always him waiting for guys to make sure they're in proper position; but when the plan is for him to intentionally miss a tope or something he just does that tope the exact same way he would have done it if someone were catching him. So he flies into that top rope and just catches Barthel's boot between the eyes, and it looked so great I was hoping it would be the finish. Bate's willingness to die at some point of a big match always makes it more annoying when he comes back with his planned comeback, but again, Barthel/Aichner are great at taking fast offense (it's not easy to plausibly take that rolling double kappo kick but GYV and these two make it look good). The finishing stretch is hot, and while I wish Barthel and Aichner would have won (Mustache Mountain is already established and I'm really not sure losses would hurt them at this point, the others have far more to gain with a win), this whole thing was great action. 

Mark Coffey vs. WALTER NXT UK 1/13 (Aired 2/6/19) (Ep. #28)

ER: NXT UK is great at delivering on these compact ass kicking matches that get out of there before any of the violence is deemed pointless by repetition. If two guys are beating the hell out of each other, you really only need several minutes of it, as the longer it goes the more redundant the damage becomes. WALTER debuted in ring last week, crushing Jack Starz, and I like how they sent him out the next week against someone much closer to his size. A WALTER squash is plenty fun, but seeing him trade chops and clotheslines with another big guy is much more fun. Coffey does cool things with his control, and I think a lot of his offense hit even harder than WALTER's. Coffey's chops can't come close to matching WALTER's, but his body punches sure as hell hit harder. Coffey also throws hard kicks to WALTER's back, stomps his calf to set up a chinlock, works in and out of a snug back stretch, and a truly great elbow smash to WALTER's jaw. Having a big meaty opponent gives a nice canvas for WALTER's offense, big strikes landing hard across a broad surface. He drops Coffey with a nasty backdrop on the apron, throws loud chops in the corner, hits a nasty running kick, and stretches Coffey over the top rope by jamming his boot underneath Coffey's chin. More chops, uppercuts, clubs to the chest, both guys really dealing, all of it heavy. Match ends a little simply, with a WALTER dropkick and powerbomb. It wrapped things up a little neatly, but I much prefer the match wrapped up neatly in 6 minutes than seeing 10 more minutes of chop exchanges. This is one of the harder hitting NXT UK matches we've gotten so far, here's to more!

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NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool 1/12/19

Tyler Bate/Trent Seven vs. James Drake/Zack Gibson

ER: Talk about underwhelming. I've actually seen this tag talked about as "the best WWE brand tag of the decade" and that is just madness. This was an overly long tag match that occasionally threatened to get good, but was always derailed. First things first, this did not need to be a 24 minute match. The work within in the match did not justify the length, as it basically broke down into a long heat segment on Seven, building to a Bate hot tag that required Drake and Gibson to either hold still or dump themselves on their heads (Drake especially leaned into and flew for every strike, lariat, and suplex Bate threw). Bate's offense was nothing but GYV repeatedly getting into position to take something ridiculous, from Gibson having to constantly be flustered by any strike Bate threw, on up to both Gibson and Drake having to hold perfectly still for several seconds just so Bate could do one of his Big Strong Boy spots and lift both in a short airplane spin. Gibson and Drake did excellent work finding plausible ways to fall for the same Bate tricks and make the offense look as good as it did. Seven turned in fine work as the FIP and I would have liked to see more of that, building to an actual comeback from him. Instead it felt like Bate kept hogging all the big babyface moments for himself. Seven did hit a nice low elbow suicida early, but much of this was built around Bate as the big star. Drake and Gibson had some great moments down the stretch. I thought both had real on point elbow strikes, and they hit a twisting suplex/Drake 450 that looked like something that should definitely finish a match. The wildest spot of the match was GYV hitting a Doomsday Device tope that Bate is pretty damn crazy to even consider taking. For a match that felt built around Bate in some selfish ways, I can't deny he took the silver bullet with that one. With some editing and a more of Bate's nonsense cutoff this could have been really good, as it was I will just remember it as a tag match that was too long. 

Jordan Devlin vs. Finn Balor

ER: This was going to be Devlin/Banks and then they changed it to a surprise Balor appearance. He got a great reaction from the loud crowd, but the match wasn't as satisfying as it could have been. They were bringing up the teacher/student aspect a lot throughout the match, but that aspect was kind of the monkey wrench of the match. Devlin has been dominant and mean during the entire run of NXY UK so far, and this match just made him look like a weaker version of Finn Balor. This should have been Devlin surprising the returning star, not the returning star showing that he's still on top even though he hasn't been there. I just don't see the point in running a "new guy dominating everyone here is always a step behind guy who has been up on the main brand". This was where Devlin needed a definitive win. Balor did look good, and that at least made him mauling Devlin make sense. I can get more behind a cocky heel student underestimating his teacher. Devlin is generous about running into Devlin's best stuff, but he throws harder. His kicks really land well here, the sliding apron dropkick looks decapitating and his shotgun dropkick makes Devlin's fast corner bump belieavable. Devlin's offense paled next to Balor's, and he had been looking like a real killer on the weekly shows, but he still made offense look great. He really got dumped with a great Balor brainbuster right after impaling himself into Balor's knees while attempting a moonsault. So it was not a match without great moments, and Balor looked like a star, but it all felt backwards. 

Eddie Dennis vs. Dave Mastiff

ER: This took a little bit to get going, but eventually came through on delivering what I wanted from it: The heaviest guy on the brand going at it with the tallest guy on the brand. The No DQ stip was the thing that slowed things down at first, as not far in we were taking long breaks to go grab chairs and ring steps and set up tables, and when you look at a 10 minute match and realize that 15% of it was plunder retrieval you gotta wonder about your resource allocation. But I appreciated Mastiff's dedication to John Cena's specific kayfabe ritual of preserving the sanctity of the ring steps' weight. Mastiff hoisted these steps into the ring like the weight 200 lb., a thing I always genuinely got excited to see Cena do. Cena would stumble around struggling to lift the ring steps in the way Marcel Marceau would struggle to keep his kite line straight, and while Mastiff doesn't have that same commitment I still always like wrestlers giving some integrity to their weapons. Mastiff ends up eating a nasty side slam on those ring steps, and the Singapore cane shots where metered out and delivered to strong effect, never devolving into exchanges and always given time to sink in. We got a couple cool visuals off of Dennis catching Mastiff up top and planting him with a Razor's Edge, didn't actually think Dennis would be able to pull off the lift and he did these great shaky legs as he was walking to the center of the ring to deliver it. Awesome spot. 

Things got really good when Dennis flipped out and tore back the ringside mats, knocked Mastiff off the apron with a hard back elbow after blocking Mastiff's suplex off the apron. But Mastiff winds up planting him on the ballroom floor with the Finlay roll and then squashes him with a senton. Dennis gets one last nice shot at a win after Mastiff misses a split legged moonsault, and even muscles Mastiff up for the neck stop driver. Mastiff handled the kickout so well that I actually thought Dennis was winning. But, Mastiff slips out of another Dennis Razor's Edge attempt, and bounces Dennis off his neck with a sick German suplex, then a cannonball through the table that Dennis had set up. I thought the violence worked well in this match, and they didn't shoot way past the time they needed to have a nice big man war. The big spots that got nearfalls were built to well, and the lack of overkill made the spots they did do mean a lot more. 

Toni Storm vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: I liked the first 2/3 of this a lot more than the final stretch, as the finishing stretch really felt like they threw out everything that was working for the match in favor of doing the same strike exchange/finisher trading that you see in a lot of modern title matches. The first parts of the match where filled with little things and attention to detail, stiff work over melodrama. Once the melodrama and ugly crying and Home Alone faces kick in you know what kind of match it turned into. The opening cat and mouse was fun, loved the timing the went into Ripley running out to the floor only to be nailed by a Storm tope, and I love how Ripley switched up her game to work this obnoxiously dominating style, always yanking Storm around the ring by her hair and mashing her face with palms and boots. Any time Ripley was in control it would be filled with these dirty exchanges, not just locking a move on but pulling hair before hitting a move. When Storm would kick out of something, Ripley wouldn't just lie there before picking her up for another move, she'd be instantly kicking at Storm, and not enough wrestlers fill those spaces with actual action. I thought Storm was great at fighting back, and I liked how the worked in the headbutt cut off spot as an almost equalizer, giving Storm recovery time while making Ripley vulnerable. Storm's Germans kept landing, and I liked where this was heading. Until I wasn't. I didn't love the hockey fighting (and the fact that it looked better than a lot of other hockey fighting spots just shows you how awful these spots almost always look), and the big melodramatic shocked face 30-45 second waiting period in between hitting finishers a few times just felt like a different match, or a big fat forward to the end of this match. 

Joe Coffey vs. Pete Dunne

ER: I correctly pointed out the needlessness of the tag title match going nearly 25 minutes, so obviously when you get a main event that goes 35, there will be complaints. This is one of those long matches where the longer it goes, the more flaws you notice from both wrestlers, things that could have easily been avoided if they just stuck to their strengths and didn't try to take such a big slice. If you turn this into a 17 minute title match - which is more than enough time to hit literally every single beat you would want to hit - then this could have been something worth talking about. It's biggest crime? It didn't feel like it built at all for 30 minutes. The opening mat work looked good, I was into Coffey trying to bend Dunne's wrist and Dunne making Coffey stop that by bending on his fingers, the kind of opening couple minutes that could lead to good things. But once they got that out of their systems this turned into a match where minute 5 looked eerily similar to minute 35, and that's almost always a problem with this overly long "wars". Guys are dead on their feet throwing...and they remain dead for a half hour. There was a spot where Coffey locked in a nice crab and started stomping on Dunne's head, and of course Dunne was then "knocked out", which lead to Dunne selling the crab the exact same way he sells any submission: lie there motionlessly until it's time for him to just get out of it. It also revealed how much Dunne requires his opponent (especially larger opponents) to do all of the lifting while he's planning his next move. Multiple times I saw Coffey have to roll himself into the ring, move his arm into a submission, place himself just right in the ring so Dunne could get to his next spot. The rolling into the ring annoyed me the most, as Dunne couldn't even go through the motions of attempting to lift Coffey, just put his hands on him and let Coffey roll himself back in. It's the equivalent of a wrestler who just puts his hand on his foe's shoulder and lets the guy stand back up on his own before getting hit with another move. It's lazy and unfocused.

And just as the opening tag felt like everyone in the match was working just to give Tyler Bate showcase spots, this whole match was selfishly and overbearingly the Pete Dunne Show. Every move that Coffey did, no matter how devastating, was used as a way to get Dunne back into the match. I'm not even certain Coffey was able to string two pieces of offense together, because there were so many times where he hit a powerslam, or a suplex, or a clothesline, and it would lead to Dunne getting to his feet first or Dunne kicking out and going right back on offense. When you factor in that Dunne was the one going for cheap shots by attacking Coffey's fingers, the whole match felt like Coffey was the underdog babyface who couldn't keep down a heel Terminator. The whole match was about Dunne's explosive offense, so everything Coffey did was just to set up Dunne being explosive again, and every big spot in the match was used as a match restart. That's the main thing that lead to this feeling like it had zero build, is every big spot for 30 minutes just lead to either both squaring off in bad looking exchanges as if there hadn't just been a big crash. I think Mastiff/Dennis earlier on this show was a good example of making the biggest stuff in a match mean something, give them consequences. This could have built into a match with consequences at any point, but they kept choosing to make their own offense mean little. 

These complaints would have been there without them doing other annoying fluff like "my elbow strike knocks you into the ropes which allows you to bounce back and lariat me which allows me to spin around with a punch!" Dunne has a few bad strike combos that make opponents look like total clowns when they fall for them, made me appreciate more of Tyler Bate's misdirection attempts before hitting his combos. Dunne's combos all require Coffey to duck stupidly just so Dunne could hit bad left/right combos. By the end we lose the thread so much that we get a couple of weird "both men fall off the top rope but we don't know what move they were supposed to be hitting so we'll just act like it didn't happen but also act like it was extremely damaging even though both wrestlers just went back to doing things." Through 20 minutes of this match I still thought there was a salvageable match. They clearly wanted to do something special in the first UK TakeOver main event, but their idea of "something special" was always "let's get to another run of big Pete Dunne offense!" This needed an editor, badly, but post HHH wrestlers have this weird aversion to hiding their weaknesses. 

ER: I was hoping for a better show considering it was the first TakeOver, and the people wrestling clearly wanted to put on a great show. Sadly, it appears that I dislike the instincts a lot of the guys when constructing a "big" match. It felt like the time could have been much better utilized on the show. They could have easily trimmed 12 minutes off the main event and had Jinny vs. Isla Dawn, showcasing two other women to set up a future title contender. Having only 5 matches, one of them FAR too long, just means less people showcased on the biggest show the brand ran so far, and one of those matches was used to show that the already established Finn Balor could still easily best someone who had been looking like a title threat. This show should have been used as a springboard and it came off like a muddled, confusing show when looking at what it actually accomplished.

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NXT UK Matches Worth Watching: Devlin! Gallus! Ripley! Isla Dawn! Mustache!

Rhea Ripley vs. Isla Dawn NXT UK 10/14 (Aired 12/19/18) (Ep. #17)

ER: Strongly worked women's title match with a nice build and no overkill, plus a ton of very engaging headlocks and collar elbows. Their lockups looked really good and both looked like they were putting full weight into them, and both leaned really heavily into every chinlock, headlock, and submission. Ripley was really pressing her weight on a grounded chinlock and Dawn's standing side headlock looked really wrenching. This was the toughest Ripley has looked so far and she looked really dominant stomping the hell out of a collapsed Dawn in the corner. Her kicks, clubbing strikes, and then cool low angle Saito suplex all send Dawn folding in believable ways, and they never lose that sense of actually working for a move. Dawn fights out of another suplex but gets locked in the standing cloverleaf. Ripley had fought to get the cloverleaf earlier and got kicked off, and I loved how that played out because it actually looked like Ripley stumbled getting it on which gave Dawn the opening to kick her off. This time there was no fumble and she was able to lock it in convincingly, leading to a nice rope break (with Ripley awesomely kicking Dawn's rope grab arm after she broke the hold). Dawn's comeback looks good, she brings sharp elbows with her full body being thrown into them, dodges Ripley's dropkick and gets to run hard into the ringpost. I really didn't love the standing exchange, thought the strikes were the weakest part of the match, and thought the exchange felt totally out of place within the match they had been working. But I liked Dawn returning the Saito suplex favor with a nice one of her own, and I liked how succinct the finish was. Oddly, the middling strike exchange did a nice job of setting up the sudden finish, with Dawn again going back to standing kicks and missing, leaving her wide open to getting her arm trapped and then getting planted with the Riptide. 

Jordan Devlin vs. Kenny Williams NXT UK 11/24 (Aired 12/26/18) (Ep. #19)

ER: Devlin has been unexpectedly good at these 5 minute matches with interesting stories and satisfying internal builds. Devlin worked this like a squash and loudly kicked and elbowed Williams around the ring, and it made Williamses' big comeback come off huge. Devlin worked quick on the beating, with that same Dynamite Kid-style domestic bully speed, pursuant. If Williams would spill to the floor Devlin would just out immediately after him to beat on him some more. And when Williams started firing back Devlin put that same energy into bumping hard to the floor, and starting it all off by catching kneebone right to the balls as Williams counter the standing shooting star. Williams hit a great tope, running around the ring determined to do the dive no matter where Devlin was going. But Devlin was not down for long and always came back more vicious than before. He catches and throws Williams with a half nelson suplex that has a very non-WWE allowed arc to it, and yanks Williams by the arm into a sick Saito suplex. Williams has a lot of offense that requires his opponent to be in a specific place and that leads to hitches and phoniness in his matches, but Devlin is really great at anticipating his marks and because of that brought about the best Kenny Williams match so far. 

Wolfgang/Mark Coffey vs. Tyler Bate/Trent Seven NXT UK 11/24 (Aired 1/2/19) (Ep. #21)

ER: I always heard NXT UK crowds were quiet, but apparently nobody else is watching loud main event tag matches like this one. The crowd kept getting louder and louder for a Trent comeback as Gallus kept holding him down with awesome bearhugs and body vices. I thought this was a standout performance from Wolfgang and Coffey, both working convincing bearhugs without losing any of the drama. I'm someone who's already going to be interested in long grounded bearhug sequences, so getting two from Wolfgang and one from Coffey is going to make me happy. Coffey is really mean whenever he tags in to work over Seven, really laying in some forearms and even driving a fist into a kidney. The crowd gets rightly invested in Seven fighting closer and closer to making tags, Gallus great at cutting him off and laying in boots. Seven gets tossed rudely to the floor by Wolfgang, and when Coffey goes out to retrieve him he catches a hard surprise vertical suplex on the floor from Seven. Seven tags in and Bate runs through both with a nice hot tag, hitting a pair of topes, including one that would have sent him into the 2nd or 3rd row if Coffey hadn't slowed him down. I do think Bate's hot tag goes on a bit long and has a couple of his strongman spots that requires opponents to get into tough positions naturally. This one was wearing Coffey as a backpack and while also German suplexing Wolfgang. That's a tough spot to make Gallus get plausibly into position for that, but the crowd eats it up and it gets a genuine (loud) NXT chant. There's some ringside distraction from Joe Coffey and Pete Dunne and the vibe the match had been building to kind of went out the window, but overall this was a good tag. NXT UK has been kind of light on quality tag wrestling so far, their best matches clearly leaning towards main even singles and hot 5 minute singles. But Mark Coffey and Wolfgang seem to be the reason for the best stuff so far, the ones that have the best heel tag shtick for babyfaces to work off. 

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NXT UK Worth Watching: James Drake! Wild Boar! Tyler Bate! Mark Andrews!

James Drake vs. Tyler Bate NXT UK 8/25 (Aired 11/14/18) (Ep. #7)

ER: I liked the looks of this on paper and it gave me what I was hoping for. Bate is a guy with nice moves and hammy execution, and Drake is a guy who leans into hard strikes and gets into position for moves real well. Bate does moves with familiar set ups match to match, but he's good at switching things up so he's not doing every move from the exact same start point every single time. I liked the World of Sport wristlock exchanges to start, and I liked how Drake took him to the floor and brought him back in with knees. Drake is good at working Bate over, and he looks like a wrestling Billy Mitchell, and the stuff around Drake's headlock was my favorite part of the match. Drake has a great headlock and looks like he's really messing with Bate's breathing, hooking Bate's chin in his elbow crook and then holding his forearm across Bate's esophagus. My favorite part was Bate trying to break the sleeper by backing Drake hard into the turnbuckles, but he did it right when a forearm was across his throat and his face said he hurt himself more. Drake hits a corner dropkick that looks like he is going for a KO, looks like a finish and works as a strong nearfall. Bate's eventual comeback clotheslines and uppercuts look good, and his deadlift suplexes are impressive (dig that slow lift backdrop driver). I would have actually liked another twist or nearfall at the end, but I also appreciate the tidy finish. It's nice to see a guy pinned after a clothesline and tiger driver.


Wild Boar vs. Mark Andrews NXT UK 8/25 (Aired 11/21/18) (Ep. #9)

ER: This is a nice complementary pairing. Andrews benefitted from a stout base, and Boar has a ton of fun ways to flatten and throw Andrews. Boar is Tinier Taz on offense, and catches ranas nicely and bumps generously while on defense. Andrews with throw a genuinely hard right elbow smash, and he's a fun guy to see get smooshed by a nasty Boar apron senton and another one while on all fours. Boar grunts and jumps into him with headbutts, squatting on the mat and doing his own fun take on JYD headbutts. Andrews tries big stuff like a quebrada off the apron and a shooting star to finish, but the shooting star falls short (his always seems to...), but his strength is his bumping. His flying is risky but not always executed, while his bumps are big. He gets creamed on a clothesline and gets flipped far on a half nelson suplex or flattened by a fast cannonball in the corner. The finish is a little abrupt and could have used a couple twists, but Boar excels in these 5 minute action sprints and a game opponent will benefit.


COMPLETE NXT UK GUIDE

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Matches from WWE Worlds Collide 4/14/19 & 4/17/19

ER: I didn't even notice these shows when they happened. I was in NY for Mania weekend indy events, and didn't notice WWE was just running weird little shows around the city. This was out at the Brooklyn pier, and had several on paper matches that caught my eye. Now, zero things whatsoever caught my eye on the Worlds Collide event from a few weeks ago, so I'd much rather write about these matches from a year ago. Consider these much more palatable matches, and also consider how you can watch ALL of them in the time it would take you to watch the Gargano tag and the Adam Cole main event from the most recent Worlds Collide show. It's a no brainer decision.

4/14/19

Kassius Ohno vs. Aiden English

ER: It's a shame it came to this, but this was likely Aiden English's WWE in-ring career swansong. English was a favorite of mine in 2014 NXT and beyond, but pale skin and thinning hair likely wasn't going to play on the roster, although I would have been a big fan of them making him pull double duty as the nemesis of Sami Zayn and Cesaro. The ripped, bald, evil Sami Zayn! The pale Cesaro! Two built in feuds, gone. Before this match he hadn't wrestled on TV in almost 6 months, and hadn't worked a house in almost 3 (and I wouldn't hold my breath on ever getting to see one of his house show singles matches opposite Mysterio). If this match is English heading into retirement, so be it, and I'm glad we at least got to see him go up against Ohno. I would have liked something a little more substantial, something without such a go home finish, but I liked what we got. Ohno and English slug it out, and if you hadn't known English wasn't an active wrestler at this point, you wouldn't know it. He looks in incredible cosmetic shape, and as he was always a big bumper in NXT I was very happy when Ohno shoved him off the top and English crashed rough to the floor. English has a super lean, cut physique, and I think that made Ohno's submission work look even nastier. Ohno drove a knee into English's back and bent his arms behind, English's distended ribcage playing as a character in the match. As often happens, Ohno gets cocky and gets his leg caught, gets knocked to the floor, and laid out with a English tope con giro, then English nails a swanton back in the ring. This is where I wished the match had more to it, as a couple more twists, a couple more nearfalls, would have gone a long way towards landing this match on a list. But Ohno catches him napping with a (great) front kick, then unspools English into an elbow to the back of the head, banishing Aiden to 205 Live and PPV kickoff commentary.


Luke Harper vs. Dominik Dijakovic

ER: This wasn't far off from landing on the 2019 MOTY List, with really only several stupid as hell Dijakovic pinched faces and sneers keeping it away. I probably could have lobbied to have it on the list, but there's no way I could convince Phil that a Dijakovic match is worth watching, so it would have no chance making it out of Drafts. And how odd of WWE to bring Aiden English out of mothballs to work this show, and the very next match dust off Harper as well. Before this match he had been off TV for 8 months, came back and worked this singles and the pre-show WrestleMania battle royal, and then was off TV another 6 months. It's not too shocking he asked for his release a couple months back. But this was a pretty awesome big boy battle. It did veer too far into unnecessary cruiser action for my liking, but most of the big spots they integrated added to things. Yes, it is impressive when you guys move fast and fly, but all the parts before that when you were just hitting hard clubbing forearms shoulderblocks and big boots was already awesome. I usually think Dijakovic's strikes look lousy, but here he has no problem dropping the full weight of his arm across Harper's back, and dropping big elbows to the back of Harper's neck. Dijakovic throws a couple of really great suplexes, actually throwing Harper with vertical suplexes, literally throwing him instead of holding on. But Harper makes him pay dearly by spiking him with an awesome DDT, hits a big tope, hits some kind of powerslam/driver OFF the apron to the floor (really looked like he could have dumped Dijakovic on his head, camera didn't get all of it and that's probably best for the mystique), even dumps him with a half nelson suplex. By this point they'd already done more than enough for a full match, and I didn't love that Dijakovic's comeback came after some pretty gruesome offense. No doubt a space flying tiger drop is pretty grand for a guy his size, and his moonsault lands really well (considering wrestling is filled with actual juniors who can never land their moonsault well). Finish felt a little abrupt considering the crazy degrees we had ramped up to, but Harper finishing things with a huge discus lariat at least felt like a big man heavyweight way to end it. This felt like a big match, and I like the absurdity of guys killing themselves on a small show taped during Mania festivities. I could have done without a couple things here, but also got a ton of two big guys throwing boots at each other's faces, and that's plenty cool.


Roderick Strong vs. Tyler Breeze

ER: Cool match between two guys who are good 10 minute TV match workers. Tyler Breeze feels like he makes more sense in 1995 WWF. His gimmick, look, and wrestling style would all fit in there, and make him stand out more. But until time travel is both invented and made affordable to the masses, I will be fine with Breeze working fine modern TV matches. This was almost amusingly worked as young upstart Strong really dominating the "veteran" Breeze, obviously amusing because Strong is both several years older than Breeze AND I've been watching Strong for nearly 20 years. But Strong is a good guy to control a match, and I love the mix of over shoulder backbreakers and gourdbusters he used to slow Breeze, as well as his nice knees. Breeze works matches like these as a kind of Christian-cum-Waltman, getting most of his offense by using Strong's aggression against him: catching him under the chin with an upward angle dropkick off the ropes, hitting a slick armdrag off an Argentine stretch sub, or shifting momentum on a suplex to get a close nearfall small package. Breeze stands out with strong execution on small things, things that don't really get lauded and wouldn't have stood out on a go go go show like the new HBK NXT. But I appreciate someone who can actually mix up a stand and trade section by throwing in nice kicks to the stomach, someone with nice forearms, and a nice shoulder thrust to the stomach. Breeze is really good at fighting for nearfalls, not just making them seem like a small part of a larger/sillier reversal sequence. There was a really great crucifix pin that Strong fought against, and later a big suplex that Breeze reversed by kneeing Strong in the head, then got a schoolboy when Strong attempted it again. The finish was a little dry and felt like a "well it's over now, hit your finisher" kind of finish, and didn't really fit with the match they had crafted. But overall this was really good and a pairing I'm glad we got to see.


4/17/19

Brian Kendrick vs. Tyler Bate

ER: Kendrick worked less than 20 matches last year, and I believe this was the only one I hadn't seen. And I love these unsupervised Kendrick matches, where he works shtick and stalling and little moments that won't turn up on real WWE programming. Before the match they even showed a selfie Bate took with Kendrick 6 years prior while Kendrick was there on a European tour, and while I was hoping that would lead to Kendrick absolutely punishing him in a supreme show of "never meet your heroes", I very much liked what we got instead. Kendrick would stall on lock-ups, grab a headlock (one of the few guys on the roster who really knows how to work a headlock), roll to the floor to avoid contact, and then when finally caught and backed in a corner, he eyepoked his way right out of that jam. They do some cute bullshit around eyepokes, with Bate getting him back, Bate reversing one using Three Stooges tactics, etc. Goof around Kendrick is fun as he does that stuff with hints of violence, but I would have been a bigger fan of him continuing to utilize them without the comedy, leading to a bigger moment. But Kendrick works this like a small close indy show match, playing to kids in the crowd, and multiple times trying to get a USA chant to purposely muddy the waters and make people cheer his heeling. He was really great at getting up for all of Bate's offense, even when the "big strong boy" seemed light on the lift (the tiger driver finish looked entirely Kendrick). And damn if the Captains Hook isn't one of the sickest submissions in wrestling. I didn't love how Bate broke the hold just by being in the hold for awhile and then standing up out of it, but the application and the different ways Kendrick traps guys in it is always great, and here we got the added bonus of Kendrick calling him Boy (after the Big Strong Boy chanting).

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Ohno vs. Bate

11. Kassius Ohno vs. Tyler Bate WWE NXT UK 10/5 (Aired 11/14/19)

ER: This was pretty fantastic, and a real masterclass performance from Ohno. This was a long match, at 25 minutes one of the longest WWE matches of the year. But Ohno is one of the best time fillers in wrestling, and his attention to small details and effective delivery in the biggest moments continues to keep him one of my all time favorites. Ohno can work the mat, he can deliver trippy sequences other people can't, he can work a big bomb throwing stretch, he can really smash a guy and really pump him up for babyface comebacks, and has no problem talking a bunch of trash. Ohno comes off as confident as anyone I've seen in a ring, someone who never even seems like he's thinking of the next spot, who often makes his match progression seem effortless and instinctive. He broke out some tricks that I could watch over and over, stuff like grabbing Bate by the arm and pressing in on Bate's inner knee with his boot to force him down, some neat standing exchanges around abdominal stretches, or when he worked a cravat with Bate held completely off the ground (with such a size difference that it made it look like Ohno was choking out a doll in his Baby Bjorn) before snapping him right down to the mat. 

He sends Bate flying and crashing after lifting out of the Tyler Driver, buries a sick knee into Bate's guts on a corner charge, and lights Bate up with kicks, elbows, punches, every single shot landing big. Ohno was such a bully and such an asskicker that it almost made it implausible that Bate could come back from it all. Ohno looked like he was aiming to win by count out when he kicked Bate's head clear out of the ring. But I like how Bate hit harder the longer the match went on, really trying to bridge that gap. We've seen so many awful stand and trade strike exchanges this year, and here's Ohno and Bate punching each other in the face, Ohno trying to fake him out by going high (Ohno had successfully faked Bate on a few moves throughout the match) and getting popped for it. Bate hits a torture rack airplane spin which looked downright freakish due to the size difference, like Superman growing into his strength and realizing he could lift his father for the first time. Not many guys can make me excited for a 25 minutes match these days, but Ohno is one of them.

PAS: I have been watching Chris Hero matches for about 20 years now, and he continues to deliver in new and interesting ways. He is probably the most formally inventive wrestler of the 2000s. He constantly tweaks his approach, not just by adding cool moves but by switching up his approach. And I love his new approach, where he tries to prove his wrestling superiority only to snap and try to knock someones head in. I loved how the size difference was used here, Ohno was able to manhandle Bate in some really cool ways, and that hanging Hero's clutch was truly disgusting. On the other side of it Bate was able to hit his power moves, but had to really convey struggle. Bate lifting Ohno into a German suplex after failing early, by using every ounce of his strength, was so much more impressive then big guys flying around the ring for little guy throws (that was always one of my few problems with Vader, he needed to sandbag a bit more). Clearly we need to go back and watch the NXT UK Ohno because he has been hiding in plain sight.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak Catch-Up

ER: At the Nashville airport waiting to fly back to SFO, and none of these guys showed up on WWE TV this week! So I'm gonna take this chance and find each of their earliest match from this year that I have not seen, and write them up. This feels like a good way to play some 2019 catch-up while waiting for new material, while waiting for a flight, while just wanting to be home this second.


Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Bartel WWE NXT 1/3/19 (Aired 1/23)

ER: I wasn't expecting this one to be so hotly contested, but Aichner and Bartel worked most of this as if they were exact same level as Lorcan and Burch, and I didn't realize that was ever the case. Maybe Lorcan and Burch's stocks have just risen that much in only 6 months. But this was cool, filled with hard suplexes and big back elbows and uppercuts. Burch had a couple nasty cut off moments - the dropdown out of air single leg being one - and threw a big headbutt, but I was surprised (pleasantly) at how much Bartel and Aichner ran this. That mostly stopped when Lorcan started his big comeback, flying in with an elbow and hitting a wild flip dive out the other side. This was under 5 minutes but filled to the brim, everyone shining, crazy highspots like Aichner's triple jump moonsault, or hard strikes to the neck, fun watch.

Drew Gulak vs. Mark Andrews WWE World Collide 1/26/19 (Aired 2/2)

ER: I liked this, but a lot of it felt like Andrews along for the ride, and even though it really wasn't long I found myself just wanting Gulak to put this little floppy haired guy away. It had good basics, side headlock takeovers that whipped over, some fine headscissor reversals, neat wrist control segments from Gulak, rolling foreheads off each other, stuff I like. And I have dug Andrews before, think he always has the talent to show up, but I also don't like a lot of the times he's shown up. I don't think he looked bad here, but he looked like Gulak was schooling him and it felt long. I liked Gulak's stump puller arm bar, but we got probably a couple too many sunset flip roll up sequences (though I think the one where Gulak jumps backward to catch one with opposite momentum is almost always a great looking spot and was here). Rolling through pins into chokes is something Gulak does well, and all moments of it here were nice. An enjoyable match that really wasn't too far off from being list. One more tiny something would have boosted it well.

Gentleman Jack Gallagher vs. Tyler Bate NXT UK 1/27/19 (Aired 2/27)

ER: This had the beginnings of a seriously great match, but I thought the finish was sudden (by design), distractingly long, and more than a little silly. Since the entire match is essentially matwork leading to pinfall, with not much in between, the matwork portion was great and then things basically ended. I'm unsure if I would have been better with the match just ending as a 10 minute draw, rather than the finish we got. It's a little tough to evaluate a match with some of the best mat tricks WWE has seen, that then ends with a dozen one counts and a schoolboy. So let's just look at the matwork and soak in it pleasantly. Bate was aggressive on the mat, going after Gallagher's arm but not ever really doing too much damage, and always eventually getting shown up and punished by Gallagher. Gallagher had some smooth reversals into a headscissors, and Bate had a slick moment where he kneeled down on Gallagher's ankles to get him to loosen his legs enough for Bate to pop his head out.  Jack's Indian deathlocks and work on the knee were great, sinking in holds and doing things like digging his knee into Bate's thigh. I really liked how Bate sold the knee too, being wobbly on his feet and using his bum wheel to still do kneelifts into Gallagher's face (while making it clear that he has made the choice that it's better to use his in-pain knee as a blunt instrument than trust putting weight on it to weaponize his good knee). It looked like the match was getting off the mat and into a crazy stretch, and then the silly little finish happened. And that's fine. Wrestling isn't all about Match of the Year status and can also be about the unexpectedly good and bad. This whole thing is well worth seeing just for the opening 5-6 minutes alone, some of the most fun scrambling and transitions I've seen in wrestling this year, regardless of promotion.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Misawa! Texas Terminator Hoss? Battle Royals! Brauuuuuun!

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Texas Terminator Hoss AJPW 4/14/91

ER: We've been blessed by several new handheld matches over the past couple years, and my favorite thing about them isn't the classic main events that have been unearthed - those are surely the most important things - but my favorite thing is the weird match ups, the kind of matches that would never make TV, the natives I love against the weirdest gaijin. THOSE are my handheld dream matches, odd pairings or unique singles matches from people who only showed up on one tour, those are the kinds of things that set my wrestling heart aflutter. Texas Terminator Hoss (who later became one of the Kongs in WCW) did one AJ tour, but in that one tour got to work tag matches against guys like Andre and The Funks, and got singles matches against legends like Stan Hansen and Dynamite Kid, and future legends like Misawa and Kobashi. Cactus Jack was the other first-and-only timer on this tour, and things went differently for him in his career. Hoss was just a super big tubby guy who looked like John C. Reilly wearing his Oliver Hardy fat suit, in the coolest way. And I love seeing this because how cool is established Misawa going against not only a fairly new wrestler, but a gigantic gaijin wrestler! Misawa vs. Giant is a match I feel we didn't get enough of, so it's awesome we get to see him work opposite a style we rarely saw him against, and it's awesome that a giant gets to work someone as good as Misawa in a singles match.

It's a simple match, but a match I really liked. Hoss is a huge guy and it's cool seeing him work collar and elbows with Misawa, see him hit a big leaping avalanche in the corner, and then work a classic fat guy arm chinlock. Misawa is a guy I like in a chinlock, he always starts awkwardly breathing through his nose and fidgeting, and Hoss pushes forward with his weight. But I really like Misawa finally lacing into him, backing him up with two hard elbows and hitting a crisp chop before sending him to the floor with a dropkick, hitting his big missile dropkick in a cramped corner. Hoss gets his own eventual comeback too, catching Misawa off the ropes with a great full rotation powerslam, but belly flops on a missed standing splash. Unretired Gunslinger era was always a fun "Let's Bring This Home" guy when he was working lower in the card, someone on the apron who would come and and announce he was finishing things by hitting a few elbows and the pin. He had a bunch of great "alright let's end this" faces. It was essentially his resting face. Our finish gives us an awesome glimpse of that Misawa, when he hits one of his best ever spinkicks, cracking Hoss right in the chin with the outside of his right boot. Go back and watch that kick - I did 5 times - watch how there's no contact other than boot to face, and listen to that thwack as Hoss mans up and leans face first into that boot. Misawa finishes with an elbow to the face off the top, a cool rarity for a Misawa finish, though obviously everyone watching at home was dying to know how the hell he was going to give Hoss a Tiger Driver.

Worlds Collide Tournament Battle Royal 1/26/19

ER: This was a battle royal held during a fun Rumble weekend "three brand" showcase, with 5 reps each from NXT, 205 Live, and NXT UK. The show featured an entire tournament, and started with a battle royal, but I didn't expect the battle royal to get a full 20 minutes! I'm a real battle royal queen and really dug this one. We got a bunch of fun match-ups that we don't normally see, and some standout performances from Velveteen Dream and Tyler Bate, among others. Battle Royals are sometimes made by their eliminations, and not only did this have many of the guys really flying out of the ring to elimination, it also had a bunch of high wire act elimination teases. There were probably 10 different times that someone grabbed Dream by the head to chuck him wildly over the ropes, only to see him hold onto that top rope as his body swings wildly. It's like there was an ongoing bet to see who in the match could get more air on a non-elimination. It looked cool and really made it feel like there were constant near escapes. They didn't overshadow the numerous big eliminations, like Humberto Castillo getting knocked silly over the top, TJP getting run down the length of the apron before getting hiptossed over the buckles, Dream hitting a lariat so hard he almost flew out himself, Dijakovic hitting a wild spinning powerslam to toss someone over the top (also, is Dijakovic among the most pointless name changes they've done? Is his gimmick that he's a washed up Croatian center?), Tyler Bate throwing hard strikes on anyone that would come close, just a super satisfying battle royal. We don't get a ton of battle royals on WWE TV anymore, so this was more than welcome.

Braun Strowman vs. Bobby Lashley WWE Raw 2/25/19

ER: This wasn't even really a match, no bell ever rang and Braun just stomped off after he demolished anyone, but this was a great throwback to a favorite style of mine that I feel is underpraised. I really love those 1998 Shotgun Saturday Night/WCW Saturday Night roids guy power battles, just big dudes hitting each other pretty hard for 3 minutes. Throw some older tough vets into the mix and looking back there were a ton of fun short big boy slugfests on those syndicated shows, and this gave me the same rush. Sure, some could argue that Braun (and maybe even Lashley) should be presented a little higher than "cool undercard power guys" but whatever this whole thing worked. Lashley threw a nice beating to Braun, but you know all of that was just building excitement to a Braun Smash explosion, and it was great when we got there. Braun kicked Lashley around and threw a hard clothesline and hit a great big boot. The fireworks come right as the match culminates, with Braun and Lashley bailing to the floor, Braun crashes hard into Lashley with a shoulderblock that Lashley sells like he got thrown away by a strong gust of wind, then Braun turns around without missing a beat and crashes through Lio Rush. This didn't even get to 3 minutes, but a quick power battle like this is going to win me over every time, then send me spiraling into looking for weird Faarooq singles matches on YouTube.

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NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn IV 8/18/18

28. Undisputed Era (Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly) vs. Mustache Mountain (Tyler Bate/Trent Seven)

ER: Really bonkers spotfest tag, one of those kitchen sink matches, with a bunch of cool stuff chained together. There were a couple holes, a couple awkward O'Reilly moments, and a really overly hammy section with Seven in agony over whether he should throw in the white flag or not, while Bate butt scooted across the ring to him in a inside heel hook. That moment laid it on a bit thick. The rest of this was a fast paced death wish that ramped up the whole way, in a way that felt like they really understood the pace they wanted this to be. Strong was a real savage here, and a real nut. He took some big bumps to the floor, flipping over the top, getting knocked off the apron when O'Reilly was suplexed into him, flying onto the apron and tumbling down, making MM look real good. But man did he lay it in on a couple of cool timing spots, a flying elbow that looked like Seven got hit with a harpoon, and a wicked leaping knee to set Seven up for the killshot at the end of the match. The British guys were a little overly theatrical throughout, but when most of your shots land hard that can be forgiven pretty easily. And a lot of their shots had some thud. Bate hit some big uppercuts, had a fantastic lariat on the floor (bouncing neck first off the bottom rope and whipping around into a McGuiness-like wide swinging lariat), he also sold his knee impressively after O'Reilly worked it over with an awesome inside heel hook. I did think Bate tagged back in way too early after that big butt scooting moment, but I liked him foolishly limping and dragging his hurt ankle up the ropes. There were so many big spots, some big dives, Bate powerbombing O'Reilly into Strong to break up a submission, some brainbusters, a ridiculously kicked out off Burning Hammer, But we got some good nearfalls, some nice saves, tons of big moves, and a really fine build. Very, very hot opener.

PAS: I really wasn't looking forward to this match, over the years I have has some distaste for British indy guys, Kyle O'Reilly, Roderick Strong and indy spotfest tags. So I really wasn't looking forward to seeing Kyle O'Reilly and Roderick Strong take on some British Indy guys in a spotfest tag. Still I admit this really won me over. Really great performance by Bate and Strong especially, with their tag partners being along for the ride nicely. Bate was great in both fighting for the hot tag and getting the hot tag. I loved both of his peril sections, O'Reilly and Strong are really great and continuously tagging in and out and keeping the heat on, and when Bate evades multiple attacks to finally get the tag it felt like Indiana Jones escaping the cave at the beginning of Raiders. His hot tag after they worked over Seven was dope too, laying waste to everyone, including a great dive and a Niebla fake into a lariat. The second peril section got a little overly emotional which is a real flaw in the NXT house style (who is agenting these matches, Chris Carrabba?), but that heel hook looked great and Bate sold it well. Bate also may have pulled off the only two hit-both-partners-with-moves combos I have ever liked. Strong was a bulldozer in this too, I loved how he kept flying in to obliterate people and all of his classic Strong offense looked great. That kick out on the burning hammer knee combo was a bridge to far for me, but otherwise this was pretty damn good.

Velveteen Dream vs. EC3

ER: Overall good match with a few brief hiccups and a little awkward positioning, made up for by each guy taking the other's offense with gusto. Dream is a guy who comes off totally natural in his gimmick and movement, and EC3 doesn't always. You can see this in the awkward way Carter comes out for his entrance doing weird bunny hops. Dream is a good bumper, although I didn't like the early parts of this where he was just aping a few signature Curt Hennig bumps. Once he unnaturally got himself belly first over the turnbuckles it looks like he had to motion for EC3 to go through the old Hennig/Michaels kick to stomach/fly crotch first onto top rope spot, then moves right into taking Hennig's flip bump in the ropes off of some clotheslines. Now Dream was taking these on his shoulder on the apron, so there was a little twist, and they looked great, but something came off forced. But these two had no problem bouncing their heads and faces off the mat and floor. EC3 took a nasty floatover DDT on the metal ramp, Dream made that silly forward facebuster DDT look great in the ring, and both guys took a lot of fireman's carry slam variations (EC3 uses that a bit much and he's not really great at setting it up). Dream throws really nice right hands and I liked him using those to set up flashier things. And the finish was fantastic, with Dream hitting two Dream Valley Drivers - one in the ring and one on the apron - and then hitting his fabulous elbow drop from the top to the apron to finish it. I thought this delivered what it was going to deliver, but I'm not sure these two are good dance partners. The build was fine, but both guys kind of cancel the other out in a few ways. Their styles are almost more complementary as partners than as opponents, but I also don't need to see them as a team. Still, I liked this.

Ricochet vs. Adam Cole

ER: This match had a few fantastic big moments, and a bunch of those moments that makes me zone out during indy strike exchanges. And a couple of the biggest moments didn't really get the proper gravity that they deserved. The two big moments I loved were Cole going for a leapfrog and eating a dropkick, and Ricochet going for an Asai moonsault and getting superkicked in the face. The superkick spot looked especially match finishing (and it was even followed up by that stupid brainbuster on knee) but moments later we were just running and whipping around into our next sequences. We got a long stretch of that thing where one guy hits a strike, and it spins him a bit into position to do his own strike, which then spins the first guy into a different strike, and then they eventually all fall into a big This Is Awesome heap and breathe heavily like they were in a Godspell curtain call. And so they had these few big moments that landed big and looked great, but they were all just treated the same as the moves that looked decent and okay. A crazy flipping moonsault to the floor that sorta grazes Cole keeps him down for about the same time as Ricochet high jumping the top rope to rana Cole off the apron. A lot of their offense looked good, it just didn't appear to be very important, and there were too many of those autopilot sequences where a guy half asses step 2 of a 3 step memorized sequence, because he's already rushing to step 3 (like Ricochet not really getting height on a apron enziguiri because he's already worrying about the timing for the follow up). I didn't think this was bad, but it felt empty.

Kairi Sane vs. Shayna Baszler

ER: This didn't totally land with me, and mostly because of that awesome achilles stomp spot that Shayna did. Something like that is almost too vicious to happen early in the match, as it's so extreme that your opponent basically has to ignore it just to be able to function. There's ways you can work around it better than what Kairi did, but it's a tough wrench. But aside from that, they didn't really seem like they were having the same match. They both wanted different things, and this felt like a collection of parts from different matches. I could have seen Shayna being more sadistic, or Sane getting a stronger win, but it all felt a little disjointed. They still both do a lot to like, and that stomp to the achilles was one of my favorite things on the entire show. I loved all of Baszler's work around that right leg, bending it in all sorts of great ways, popping that ankle, bowing it out, and then curling the toes up before the big stomp. Shoot I even liked ref Jessika Carr's reactions as it was about to happen. Her face read "I feel really bad for what's about to happen to you but can't technically stop it from happening." Shayna looked like she was occasionally holding up on elbow strikes, and there were an abundance of Sane's strikes that looked like they would barely fluff a pillow. But her lunatic elbowdrops are as much of a sure thing as anything in wrestling, and they crushed Baszler. But it was hard to stay invested in Sane with all that running on that devastated leg, all that bridging, all the holding the standing crab, it was just a bit too much. I don't want people to think this was in your face bad, it wasn't. I'm sure these two have a good match against each other at some point.

PAS: I think this was a pretty great Shayna performance that got all joshied up by Kairi. I loved Shayna's taunting and shit talking. Doing Sane's goofy goosestep while kicking her ass was great. I also really liked Shayna's selling, that collapse from the spinning back fist on the temple was totally killer, as was how she snapped into killer mode any time she had a chance to throw on the rear naked choke. I thought Sane wasn't good though, this was a Manami Toyota match with only 2/3rds of Manami's athleticism. That ankle spot was an all timer, and she was up running around doing dropkicks a minute later, she was also doing a ton of over the top emotive telenovela selling, no subtlety about her reactions, everything was on a ten. I really liked the finish, and Shayna is at the point now where almost everything she does is worth a spot on an MOTY list, but I am sure there is better stuff out there, so I am fine leaving this off.

ER: So the tag match is landing on our 2018 MOTY List, but the main event...well, we disagree strongly on the main event. We'll be posting that match tomorrow, separately, and trying something a little different from how we've done things
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